Chinese PantheonMountain
Five Elements Mountain
The mountain created by Buddha to imprison Sun Wukong for 500 years after his rebellion against Heaven. The Buddha placed a seal on the mountain, and only the destined pilgrim Tang Sanzang could release the Monkey King.
About Five Elements Mountain
Buddha's mountain-seal
After the havoc in heaven, the Buddha traps Sun Wukong under a mountain of five elements (or Five-Phases Mountain) with a talisman on the summit. Five hundred years later Xuanzang lifts the seal. Journey to the West is the source. There is no earlier Buddhist sutra of this prison. The mountain is a doctrinal joke: the monkey of mind pinned by emptiness and form until a monk needs a disciple.
Sources and further reading
Source notes
These references are recorded in the catalog. Their passage wording and translation have not been checked, so quotations are not displayed here.
- Wu Cheng'en, Journey to the West, ch. 7
About this entry
By Elizabeth Stein for Mythos Atlas. About the author. Editorial notes are grounded in the site's cited sources and can be challenged through the contact page.
Coordinates mark where the myths place a site, or where the tradition locates it today. Mythic realms are left off the map or marked as symbolic placements.
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